The Adventures of William in Virtual Land
by Unfortunate Circumstances
Summary: What did our favorite dark-haired warrior do while Xana was running around with his body? Well, here he is and he's ready to tell his story. Please suspend all disbelief and make sure to remove your common sense before reviewing.
1. Genre Savvy

_The Adventures of William in Virtual-Land_

Keep in mind that this is strictly a parody, and nothing in here should be taken seriously or as a suggestion that I own anything worth suing for.  
>Everything belongs to their respectful owners and blah blah blah anything I make up is my own creation unless stated so, blah blah legalese blah blah blah...<p>

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><p>Chapter One: Becoming Genre-Savvy<p>

It's not every day that your body gets snatched away from you and used to taunt your former best friends in an effort to annoy them to the point of making critical combat errors so then my body can single-handedly execute them Mortal Kombat-style and destroy the world. In fact, that's the kind of stuff I would expect from a really good video game. You know, the RPG ones where you invested time and currency in leveling up and equipping a character, only for them to betray you and leave the party with a crapload of your best stuff. I always thought that was where the mind-stealing stuff was going to stay.

Aaaaand then it happened to me.

My name is William Dunbar, and I'm a little bit of an idiot. Okay, not so much an idiot as I am hotheaded, except when it comes to school stuff - then I really am an idiot. (Honestly, though. How much energy is spent trying to get through algebra class? I'd say an infinite amount of joules...)  
>I screwed up big-time and made Lyoko implode on itself, possibly killing Aelita's father and that is <em>not<em> a good impression to make on a group of new friends. Oh, and I got my mental essence yanked out of my body so the thing responsible could have a competent, non-resisting avatar to manifest through.

So while I was stuck in limbo while the others were working on ways to rescue me, salvage Aelita's dad, and kill Xana (in no particular order of importance), I decided to spend my time wisely by actually learning something worthwhile: how not to screw up everything ever again. I thought that was doable, pretty much...

And then I realized exactly how little I truly knew of my predicament.

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><p>Because I am a being composed of several kilobytes of data, that means, technically, I am an executable program. Yeah. Wonder how I'm gonna explain that one to mom and dad, if I ever see them again. Apparently I am attatched to a Trojan called <em>84XA2N <em>and my own program name is _D_WILLIAM_. Since I know the procedure needed to autorun myself, I can download my whole data string into whatever I want.  
>So guess what I choose? Firefox. Screw Internet Explorer - everything breaks in there and I don't want any bits of my data string being deleted or moved. That would be akin to some of the nucleotides in a chromosome suddenly vanishing or being transplanted onto a different chromosome - a mutation, if you will. I'm not planning on becoming a mutation...<p>

Hey, I can see everyone's network name on the server! Huh, I guess I'll choose a random one. Eenie, meenie, miney...four! And there's lots of binary, hexadecimal and whatnot involved. It hurts my head when I look at it, but somehow I know what it all means...how do I know what I know? Right now I'm looking at some guy's web history and I don't even know how I can read it! Well, let's see what they've been to recently...  
>CNN...meh. I Can Has Cheezburger? What the hell is that? Youtube - yeah, don't we all. Twitter: booooring. AOL, stands for 'Assholes Out Laughing'. TVTropes. Huh, it's got the word 'TV' in it, but I've never heard of the word 'trope' before. Wonder what it could be... Ah well, let's find out.<p>

I gotta dive into the internet search engines in order to access the original website page. It's a very annoying limitation. Well, here I go!


	2. The Obligatory Escort

Chapter Two: The Obligatory Escort

I have no ownership over any copyrighted characters, blah. Yeah. My creations are my own, though.

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><p>Okay. I've done some reviewing of my situation, and it turns out that I am a fucking <em>moron<em>. YES, YOU STUPID FAN-DUMB GIRLS, I ADMIT I AM REALLY THICK-HEADED. I read my character sheet and sighed initially at all the negative traits I had been assigned. At least I was Chekhov's gunman – but I have a feeling that doesn't make up for me being a stalker with a crush.

Apparently the only reason why a lot of fans hate me is because I interrupted Ulrich and Yumi's relationship. So that's it? The only reason why people want me to drop dead is because I crushed on someone and dared to admit it? Wow. I mean, I'm pretty damn sure you've done something like that before, right? What hypocrites you are. (I believe this is the part where I insert 'You Monster', but I'm not gonna push it.)

One of the few things that I think I'll be grateful for is my mark as Chekhov's gunman. I kicked off a horrible event, though, so that isn't really anything that I can be proud of or even look back on fondly. I'd rather just forget that it ever happened.

_"Hello!"_

"Holy crap," I answer. The voice shocks me out of my thoughts and for a second, I am highly alarmed. I guess that's what happens when human voices prepare you for some sort of pain – usually psychological. What? I've been hearing my so-called friends taunt me, and it's not a fun deal. At all.

There's now what appears to be a teenaged girl standing in front of me. Well, her sprite's the one standing in front of me, since I'm the only human I know that can travel into electronic networks. She wears an orange t-shirt, grey cargo pants, white sneakers, a turquoise jacket, and a pair of thin-rimmed glasses. The incoordination of her outfit bothers me subconsciously and I avert my eyes.

"Who the hell are you and how are you talking to me and you can hear me and that makes no sense whatsoever-" I sputter, before cutting myself off. _Duh_, none of this makes sense! It didn't make sense to begin with.

"I'm the obligatory Self-Insert OC," proclaims the girl. Her voice is hoarse and low, but still distinguishable as female. "I'm here to provide exposition, to guide you through cyberspace, and to be your witty but sometimes oblivious or cruel companion." She smiles, which kind of worries me, before speaking again. "Since my real name is very bland and common, you can call me Hiraku! Just kidding, call me Kate."

"That is common," I agree. Kate scoffs. "Your name is _William_. It's got two other basic names in it anyway." I pause to mull this over and decide that, as annoying as she is, she's right, and dammit my name is common; that hurts my ego a little.

"So how did you get here?" I ask her, raising an eyebrow. She shushes me. "It's just a story. Relax. Mystery Science Theater taught me that, you know." It doesn't strike me as significant, so I forget about it immediately.  
>"But HOW did YOU get HERE?" I demand, only for Kate to slap my hand.<br>"That hurt," I complain.  
>Her brown eyes smile. "Yeah, I know."<p>

After a lengthy explanation that I don't want to discuss because the word 'lengthy' should tell you all you need to know (you nitpickers), I finally cave in and allow Kate to guide me around cyberspace.

For some reason, she draws her hood over her short, brown, messy, tangled hair – well, never mind, I know the reason why she's hiding her hair.  
>"William," she grins. "William Dunbar. You said you wanted to learn how to not mess things up, right? Well, I'll help you!"<p>

I frown at her. "I don't want your help. I don't trust you. I just read about your types – you want to become a Mary-Sue, don't you? Everyone will like you here but they'll hate you out there, but either way you get attention, right?"

Kate stops cold and glares at me. "No," she replies. "I'm planning on becoming an author after I finish college and get my degrees. If I want to become a memorable writer for the _right_ reasons, I have to make sure that any expies of my personality aren't universally liked or even well-known by other characters. I'll have to make a lot of mistakes, morally questionable choices, and cause some problems to become even worse. In other words, I want to be a realistic character."

"You're starting off inside a computer talking to a kid whose body was stolen by a highly advanced, self-assured artificial intelligence," I deadpan. "Way to be realistic."

"Oh good, you're already becoming a deadpan snarker!" Kate exclaims, looking amused. "I was kind of hoping you'd go that route, since a lot of genre-savvy characters become deadpan snarkers."  
>I have to admit, when she smiles, my situation becomes more bearable in some way. Maybe it's because I know that I'm not alone in cyberspace anymore, so I feel more secure.<p>

The weird girl fixes her glasses before grinning at me. "What page do you want to see now?"  
>I stop to think her question over. What do I want to learn? How do I want to improve myself as a character both to my 'teammates' and to the audience? "Hey! Audience! Tell me what I should research!" I command, pointing at everyone reading this chapter.<p>

"If you say anything about Rule 34, your suggestions will be ignored and William will mock you in-story!" Kate adds. I glance at her.  
>"Do I even want to-"<br>"No, you really don't."

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><p>Yep, I'm allowing my readers to suggest what they think William should research next. After all, if he wants to be a better character, he's going to have to learn a <em>lot <em>before the Lyoko Warriors save him and bring him home. Please drop in a review with a suggestion!


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